Barra defends GM as senators rip legal team’s work on recalls

GM Chief Executive Mary Barra testifying on Capitol Hill last month. She appeared for a fourth time on Thursday.

* CEO also urged to widen compensation for ignition defect

Senators pressed General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra on Thursday about her decision to keep on the automaker's top lawyer and encouraged her to expand a victim-compensation program to more cars that have been recalled because of defective ignition switchs.

Barra said that Michael Millikin, GM's general counsel, is a key member of the team that is trying to fix the company and that there were "different facts" in the various recalls. She said it wouldn't be appropriate to treat other models with faulty switches the same as the company is handling 2.59 million small cars that were recalled years after a part was secretly fixed.

In her fourth appearance before a congressional panel, Barra returned to the Senate, where she had faced harsh questioning in April. While again confronting some pointed criticism, she was congratulated for her leadership in trying to treat victims fairly and to ensure that GM never again fails to recall dangerously defective vehicles.

"While General Motors' legal department came under withering attack from the Senate committee investigating the ignition-switch debacle, GM CEO Mary Barra emerged largely unscathed in the questioning, and I'm certain that is seen as a win by the top executive team at GM," Jack Nerad, executive editorial director and senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book's KBB.com, said in an email.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., opened the hearing by saying that GM should have dismissed its top lawyer. A culture of "lawyering up" as a defense against lawsuits "killed innocent customers" of GM, she said.

"I don't get how you and Lucy Clark Dougherty still have your jobs," McCaskill said to Millikin, referring also to GM's general counsel for North America. "This is either gross negligence or gross incompetence on the part of a lawyer, the notion that he can say, 'I didn't know.' "

The chief executive, in one of her strongest defenses of her staff to date, disagreed. Barra, who was promoted to the top job six months ago, reiterated her pledge to fix what went wrong and to dedicate the company to excellence and safety.

"To do that, I need the right team, and Mike Millikin is a man of incredibly high integrity," Barra said. "He has tremendous global experience as it relates to the legal profession. He's the person I need on this team. He had a system in place. Unfortunately, in this instance, it wasn't brought to his attention, frankly, by people who brought many other issues forward. He is a man of high integrity, and he is the right person."

Millikin appeared before the panel with Barra, as did Anton Valukas, the lawyer who led GM's internal investigation, and Rodney O'Neal, CEO of Delphi Automotive. Kenneth Feinberg, who is administering the compensation program for victims of crashes involving the recalled Chevrolet Cobalts and other small cars, appeared separately.

Regarding the suggested expansion of Feinberg's effort, Barra told senators including Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, that it wouldn't be appropriate to include owners of cars other than the Cobalt, Ion and four other U.S. models.

"I would say there's very different facts related to what happened with the Cobalt ignition-switch situation versus the other actions we've taken," Barra said. "Very different."